Mercy killings usually have taken place when a person on a life-support system is determined to have no chance of recovery.
In most cases, the patient is comatose or mentally unable to communicate his/her feelings and the decision to remove the life-support system is made by relatives in agreement with hospital administrators or upon authority of a local judge.
There are, however, instances when a grief-stricken relative without agreement or consent of authorities removes life-support systems.
Also there are cases wherein terminally ill patients have knowingly requested to die by mercy killing.
In California, a number of authorized hospital mercy killings have occurred: a teenaged declared brain dead from a gunshot wound; a comatose daughter accidentally short in the head; a five-year old boy comatose4 from consuming 10 oz.
of bourbon; a 26-year old man alive for five years after stab wound to the neck; and a 19-year old girl declared brain dead after a save beating.
Instances of authorized mercy killings at request of patients were a paralysis victim in California and a paraplegic in Nevada after 24 years on a respirator.
In Michigan, without authority, Dr. Jack Kevorkian gave a woman with Alzheimer's disease access to a device that allowed her, at her own request, to inject lethal chemicals into her body.
In other illegal cas4es, a terminally ill woman died request requesting her husband to slip a plastic bag over her head and a father, holding a pistol, disconnected a respirator from his comatose fifteen-year old son.
